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Authors: Sara Paretsky
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officer.
Once you get the list of firms from Barrett, you can try calling them and find out on whose behalf they’re trading. There’s no reason for them to tell you, though—and nothing illegal about trying to buy a company.”
The waiters hovered around our table. Dessert? Coffee? Ferrant absentmindedly selected a piece of apple pie. “Do you think they’d talk to you, Miss—Agnes? The compliance officers, I mean. As I told Vic, I’m way out of depth with this stock-market stuff. Even if you coached me in what to ask, I wouldn’t know if the answers I was getting were right.”
Agnes put three lumps of sugar in her coffee and stirred vigorously. “It would be unusual. Let me see the list of brokers before I let you know one way or another. What you could do is call Barrett and ask him to send you a list of the names the shares were registered in when he sold them. If I know anyone really well—either the brokers or the customers—I could probably call them.”
She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to get back to the office.” She signaled for a waiter and signed the bill. “You two stay though.”
Ferrant shook his head. “I’d better call London. It’s after eight there—my managing director should be home.”
I left with them. The snow had stopped. The sky was clear and the temperature falling. One of the bank thermometers showed 11 degrees. I walked with Roger as far as Ajax. As we said good-bye he invited me to go to a movie with him Saturday night. I accepted, then went on down Wabash to my office to finish the report on pilfered supplies.
During the slow drive home that night I pondered how to find someone who knew about forging securities. Forgers were engravers gone wrong. And I did know one engraver. At least I knew someone who knew an engraver.
Dr Charlotte Herschel, Lotty to me, had been born in Vienna, grew up in London where she ultimately received her doctor of medicine degree from London University—and lived about a mile from me on Sheffield Avenue. Her father’s brother Stefan, an engraver, had immigrated to Chicago in the twenties. When Lotty decided to come to the States in 1959, she picked Chicago partly because her uncle Stefan lived here.
I had never met him—she saw little of him, just saying it made her feel more rooted to have a relative in the area.
My friendship with Lotty goes back a long way, to my student days at the University of Chicago when she was one of the physicians working with an abortion underground I was involved in. She knew Agnes Paciorek from that time, too.
I stopped at a Treasure Island on Broadway for groceries and wine. It was six-thirty when I got home and phoned Lotty. She had just come in herself from a long day at the clinic she runs on Sheffield near her apartment. She greeted my offer of dinner enthusiastically and said she would be over after a hot bath.
I cleaned up the worst ravages in my living room and kitchen. Lotty never criticizes my housekeeping, but she is scrupulously tidy herself and it didn’t seem fair to drag her out for a brain-picking session on such a cold night, then have her spend it in squalor.
Chicken, garlic, mushrooms, and onions sautéed in olive oil, then flamed with brandy made an easy attractive stew. A cup of Ruffino finished the dish. By the time I had water hot for fettucine, the doorbell rang.
Lotty came up the stairs briskly and greeted me with a hug. “A lifesaver that you called, my dear. It was a long, very depressing day: a child dead of meningitis because the mother would not bring her in. She hung an amulet around her neck and thought it would bring down a fever of forty-one degrees. There are three sisters; we put them in St Vincent’s for observation, but my God!”
I held her for a minute before we went into the apartment, asking if she wanted a drink. Lotty reminded me that alcohol is poison. For extreme situations she believes brandy is permissible, but she did not consider today’s woes
Once you get the list of firms from Barrett, you can try calling them and find out on whose behalf they’re trading. There’s no reason for them to tell you, though—and nothing illegal about trying to buy a company.”
The waiters hovered around our table. Dessert? Coffee? Ferrant absentmindedly selected a piece of apple pie. “Do you think they’d talk to you, Miss—Agnes? The compliance officers, I mean. As I told Vic, I’m way out of depth with this stock-market stuff. Even if you coached me in what to ask, I wouldn’t know if the answers I was getting were right.”
Agnes put three lumps of sugar in her coffee and stirred vigorously. “It would be unusual. Let me see the list of brokers before I let you know one way or another. What you could do is call Barrett and ask him to send you a list of the names the shares were registered in when he sold them. If I know anyone really well—either the brokers or the customers—I could probably call them.”
She looked at her watch. “I’ve got to get back to the office.” She signaled for a waiter and signed the bill. “You two stay though.”
Ferrant shook his head. “I’d better call London. It’s after eight there—my managing director should be home.”
I left with them. The snow had stopped. The sky was clear and the temperature falling. One of the bank thermometers showed 11 degrees. I walked with Roger as far as Ajax. As we said good-bye he invited me to go to a movie with him Saturday night. I accepted, then went on down Wabash to my office to finish the report on pilfered supplies.
During the slow drive home that night I pondered how to find someone who knew about forging securities. Forgers were engravers gone wrong. And I did know one engraver. At least I knew someone who knew an engraver.
Dr Charlotte Herschel, Lotty to me, had been born in Vienna, grew up in London where she ultimately received her doctor of medicine degree from London University—and lived about a mile from me on Sheffield Avenue. Her father’s brother Stefan, an engraver, had immigrated to Chicago in the twenties. When Lotty decided to come to the States in 1959, she picked Chicago partly because her uncle Stefan lived here.
I had never met him—she saw little of him, just saying it made her feel more rooted to have a relative in the area.
My friendship with Lotty goes back a long way, to my student days at the University of Chicago when she was one of the physicians working with an abortion underground I was involved in. She knew Agnes Paciorek from that time, too.
I stopped at a Treasure Island on Broadway for groceries and wine. It was six-thirty when I got home and phoned Lotty. She had just come in herself from a long day at the clinic she runs on Sheffield near her apartment. She greeted my offer of dinner enthusiastically and said she would be over after a hot bath.
I cleaned up the worst ravages in my living room and kitchen. Lotty never criticizes my housekeeping, but she is scrupulously tidy herself and it didn’t seem fair to drag her out for a brain-picking session on such a cold night, then have her spend it in squalor.
Chicken, garlic, mushrooms, and onions sautéed in olive oil, then flamed with brandy made an easy attractive stew. A cup of Ruffino finished the dish. By the time I had water hot for fettucine, the doorbell rang.
Lotty came up the stairs briskly and greeted me with a hug. “A lifesaver that you called, my dear. It was a long, very depressing day: a child dead of meningitis because the mother would not bring her in. She hung an amulet around her neck and thought it would bring down a fever of forty-one degrees. There are three sisters; we put them in St Vincent’s for observation, but my God!”
I held her for a minute before we went into the apartment, asking if she wanted a drink. Lotty reminded me that alcohol is poison. For extreme situations she believes brandy is permissible, but she did not consider today’s woes
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